Skittish and shy, the black and white cat tucks itself into the corner of the garage. The mother of two, it makes no attempt to protect her offspring, instead preferring to seek solace in the shadows of a stack of boxes.

Madeline the cat is a feral cat, but she did not start life as a wild cat. She was abandoned by her owners when they moved out of their residence on Penn Cove Road. Oak Harbor resident Joanne Carrin discovered Madeline and two kittens when they stationed themselves underneath her birdfeeders, looking for a meal of seeds — or birds.

“There’s so many of these critters, I just can’t stand it,” Carrin said.

Carrin is trying to adopt out the cats, and has encountered a few hurdles along the way.

She trapped Madeline and her kittens Monty and Darla last October and has been trying to tame them ever since.

“These guys just started coming around and I was hooked,” Carrin said. “What would they be doing? They would just be out there starving.”

Carrin said that while she has enjoyed the cats, taming them and caring for them is often a chore with little reward. Any attempt to approach them is first met with either fear or hostility, but with the lure of a kitty treat, Monty and Madeline soon begin to show signs of normalcy.

It is tough to estimate Whidbey Island’s feral cat population, said Shari Bibich, Whidbey Animal Improvement Foundation shelter manager. The numbers are great, she said. Within seven years, one cat and its offspring can produce more than 420,000 new cats.

Shelters such as WAIF do not take in feral cats because of safety concerns to the cats and the shelter’s staff.

“Putting a feral cat in a cage is dangerous to our staff,” Bibich said.

WAIF also does not have the space to hold all of the cats that could potentially come into the shelter. As it is, the facility currently holds approximately 60 cats.

A feral cat is a cat that cannot be handled by anybody, Bibich said. “If they’re truly feral, they will not approach you,” she said. “They won’t attack unless you have them cornered or are trying to reach for it.”

Whidbey Island’s transient population of folks with summer homes adds to the problem because people sometimes abandon pets when they leave, Bibich said.

“A lot of the cats that people see are maybe not feral,” Bibich said. “They may have been dumped and lived in the open.”

If people bring a feral cat to the WAIF shelter, the shelter has three options, Bibich said. If the cat is less than three months old and a foster family is available, the family can try to tame it. If the cat is more than three months old, the shelter will spay or neuter the cat and release it back to the area where it was found. The shelter can also do nothing, she said.

“A lot of people don’t like them on their property,” Bibich said. “If people don’t feed them, they won’t want to come around.”

For Carrin, who said she thinks the fix and release program is inhumane, the option of doing nothing was not satisfactory. She works on taming the cats and is currently trying to find people to adopt Madeline and Monty.

“I just feel like I can’t get out from under it,” Carrin said. “I feel like are they going to be with me forever.”

Darla, who lets her dissatisfaction of living in a garage be known through a low rumbling growl, is not adoptable — yet. Carrin uses an oven mitt to pet the cat, shielding her from the sharp claws that await her warm and loving hand.

“It’s been a real chore,” Carrin said. “I’ve kind of gotten a little disillusioned. I’d like my garage back.”

* If you are interested in adopting one of these kitties, please go to www.savingpetsoneatatime.org and look for Monty and Madeline on the adoption list.

You can reach News-Times reporter Eric Berto at eberto@whidbeynewstimes.com.